The Strong museum is an interactive children’s museum in Rochester, NY that has been working hard to preserve electronic gaming. Buried among their astounding collection of 70,000 some games are a few Virtual Boys. I have access to HF, FBs, and a link cable, but what I was missing was a 2nd VB and someone to play with. So, I reached out to JP Dyson and asked to be hosted for a day of gaming!

Today Andrew Borman and myself connected two VBs with
Keven Mellott’s link cable and tested Mario’s Tennis (on FB #13 and a FB+) and then spent some serious play time with Hyper Fighting! I also let anyone interested (who happened to walk into the collections room) test out Bound High!, Space Pinball, and a few other games.

We played games while discussing the history of the VB, HF, and the future of homebrew. We talked about prototype games. We shared life stories. We laughed. It was a great day of retro gaming!

I left a link cable and two Mario’s Tennis carts as a donation from both myself and Kevin (Thanks again Kevin!). As far as I am aware this is the 1st museum to have such items in their permanent collection.

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Just to add-on a bit…

Mario’s Tennis was a little glitchy. Some sprite glitches and the ball would disappear over the net at times (ending the round). We also managed to glitch the score into saying “Error”.

HF played amazingly smooth. The sound was perfectly in sync. I loved how it says “you won” or “you lose” on the appropriate VB. we used the codes Ben posted and tested all fighters, stages, and the hidden Ben character. This game is fun on its own, but it is so much more enjoyable with a 2nd player.

Everyone who played Bound High! enjoyed it. Same should be said for Space Pinball.

Oh nice, as soon as I heard the name of the museum I thought of Borman, and lo and behold you ended up having a good game sesh with him. Very cool! Looks like he’s enjoying his new job 🙂

This is awesome. The majority of my extended family lives in Rochester and I try to take my kids to the Strong Museum once a year. I knew they had a collection of vintage games (and arcade) but I was not aware they had the VB!

That is fascinating! I love the setup and that it was able to be donated (the cable and carts). I can never get enough of the VB getting love <3

Just saw this thread. Thanks a lot for coming out, I had a blast playing the games. Im glad I held off on ever really playing Bound High in an emulator, on the system itself it was great.

Hyper Fighting was way better than I expected it to be, and when Mario Tennis worked, it was great too.

Thanks to Lester and Kevin for making it possible!